welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour walk down a city street you'll be hard pressed not to find dozens of cigarette butts lining the pavement but what you see is garbage and litter sparrows see as a tool to improve the quality of their own lives so yeah these little birds have adapted to living in the big city in the nights geeky science segment and what happens to a nation when one political party goes completely and utterly insane i tell you and tonight's daily to. welcome to your take my take a live our phone lines are now open so if you want to tell me your opinion make a comment or ask a question live on the air give us a call at two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four now time for our first

caller of the night ken in rochester new york they can walk into the program. how you doing i'm fine i want to talk about race relations. what say yeah well i kind of heard that but i kind of think that people need to kind of get away from the racial issue and we need to think of the world you know as americans and americans around the world and not so much of the you know this color of that color color really doesn't matter i mean i mean it it does to some people but when you really break it down we're all human we all breathe the same marry the same food and we need to kind of get back to that and stop looking at each other and say well this one does this and there's no balance people don't want to get along with each other and i just don't really understand that i can i'm with you and i appreciate your perspective on that and i share it however the fact of the matter is the right

now twenty five percent of the republican party wants to secede from the union and there's a good chunk of them who want to do so because it's a largely white party and they want to have their largely white country and you've got people like pat buchanan write books about how this is going to be the end of civilization because the white people are going to run anymore time for us to go get a grip. brother mccain in los angeles the mccain welcome to the program. the issue came up about race because race is hardly permanent in california courts i am a sixty four year old black man my house was burglarized and broke into i saw was a claim against the farmers in charge went to court the farmers in charge sent me their orders to me or barroso telling me to wash my hands i said this is old news later you can you are yes ariel i'm not i got our senior copy of the garbage nearby so sold me to wash my hands of it i went to the courts and shot them until he got

the judge deny me even talking about it i had i had to go to the judicial council would own the judges stockmann. they are so worrisome and of course in sacramento this he read me in an elevator i had witnessed and i goes yeah brother mccain i'm sorry i have to say i had to stop there because it but i appreciate your perspective in your column but. if individual stories are anecdotal stories i mean i have no way of knowing if it's true or not and so you know i can't really comment on it but i do know that racism is alive and well in the united states racial discrimination is alive and well you know this is a really outrageous stuff is going on out there robert in washington d.c. you want to talk about the deficit roger robert you know you. get my figure. back robert you know and the wall street and the people in wall street are all the . you know the bankers than all greater well i absolutely agree with you robert and

very much appreciate you raising the topic i had senator sanders on a radio show last week and he's and he's saying you know the banks just crashed the economy why not have the banks pay for it and there's a number of number of people saying this it's you know pretty pretty obvious the banks just crashed the economy if we simply put eight point two five percent or even a point one percent tax on every stock transactions called a security security transaction excise tax stepped excess t.-t. is what they used to be called abraham lincoln put it on track stock trades to help pay for the for the civil war then then it went away through the through the gilded age and then in one thousand nine hundred eight one thousand nine hundred eight the mckinley administration put it back into place to pay for the spanish-american war it stayed there until the one nine hundred thirty s. f.d.r. took that step tax and doubled it in order to pay for the securities exchange commission and stood on the books until nine hundred sixty four and in fact it was

generating so much money in sixty four so much extra money so much more money than they needed to pay for the u.s. as you see that l.b.j. said. let's just do away with that with you know i get a little encouragement from wall street no doubt and now it's gone but a bunch of other countries around the around the world are doing it and we need to be doing it too so it's been called the robin hood tax it's been called the wall street tax whatever we need to do steve in spokane washington hey steve what's on your mind tonight hi just how are you doing for well just just about here in about detroit and. were issues. prior to reagan there was the state federal worker program workouts to risk. him. to cancel employees to to get jobs once he was elected he he to. funding away from those

programs. and you're absolutely right stephen i appreciate pointed out in fact that was just one little piece of it ronald reagan was the first president in the history of the united states to appoint as director of the labor department a man who was hostile to labor and he set a precedent for every republican administration that followed and it's one of the reasons why the middle class has been so taken apart since robin in is a potage oklahoman life and that right. ok great thank you for calling thank you thanks for watching and you want to talk about job outsourcing you know why can't they tax those people for taking the jobs we've lost i don't know how many jobs here. when it's dark you know for space. and. their service jobs their minimum wage. how can you support a restaurant that nobody can make enough money to go buy the stuff to to it you're

absolutely right robin thank you for raising that issue i very much appreciate your calling and raising it here's the deal. when nancy pelosi was speaker of the house three years ago. almost four years ago when and suppose he was speaker of the house the the democrats in the house of representatives put together legislation the said you know it's crazy that we give tax breaks to companies like bain capital and mitt romney when they take apart factories like they did was inside in ohio just last month when they literally took apart a factory piece by piece and shipped it off to another country where they reassembled it and everything was done with cheap labor and the company actually got a tax break for this and then they also got preferential treatment on the money that they made overseas and and when they sell the products back to themselves or the united states they could be just determine the price so they can figure out where they want to keep their profits so palosi said this is nuts we're going to do away with a tax break and on top of that we're going to give

a tax break to any company that has their manufacturing overseas that wants to bring it back so we're going to do away with incentivizing pushing jobs offshore and we're going to incentivize pushing pulling jobs back it passed the house of representatives it passed it got to the u.s. senate and the republicans filibustered it and that's why harry reid needs to change the filibuster at the beginning of the year so they can so that we can stop this republican obstruction all the democrat republicans control in the house makes it a little problematic elouise in dens solum pennsylvania or is that how do you how do you set the city there. and then challenge ok great and thank you for calling you want to talk about privacy. well not privacy specifically. but with the government wanting to tell women whether they can or cannot have abortions . i don't hear as a matter of birth control anybody saying that the government has the right to tell

a man to have access to me or not the government doesn't touch men yet there are just as much responsible prefer birth control as women elouise very eloquent point thank you for calling and making appreciate your doing that and i remember the comment that was made i forget by whom i might have been. might have been jane fonda but i'm not sure that if if if men could get pregnant then abortion would become a sacrament adam in rockville maryland adams thanks for calling you want to talk about discrimination. i'm great that i get better health care. now the last person that you had on the. last argument. those are my. college. grad students.

now why would i want why would we want to do that. i don't it seems adam thank you for the call it seems crazy talk to me frankly and it's not anything that i it's not a world that i would want to live in it's not a country that i would want to live in and in fact i would submit to you that literally from the founding of this country. you know with the abolition movement was already going as the constitution was being written from the founding of this country till today a lot of people have fought and died and marched and struggled for a colorblind society or an integrated society or a society where everybody has an equal chance regardless of their ancestry or their race and you know to just throw all that away in the name of the civil war something makes no sense to me and for in atlanta georgia amber thank you for calling thanks for watching what's on your mind you want to talk about race relations and yes i guess my husband and i actually chose to move into an all black neighborhood and where minority where why and we quite enjoy living in the

neighborhood we get along with all of our neighbors but we have noticed psychologically on the wire side and the black side that it's really hard to get over the past if you're black you don't want the things that happen to you in the past to happen again to your parents to get a little bit defensive or look at a look at the white person might you know i don't know if i can trust you this is what you're capable law and the white person seems impatient like oh that was a long time ago you need to get over it and i think when one is looking too much in the past and not moving forward and the other one is dwelling on how the other one should hurry up and forget we're not really going to get to the place that we need to be with it should be our character and if you're bad and you walk around and you disregard law and you do things that hurt our society then there should be consequences if you're a good person and it shouldn't matter your race and my husband i always look for

a way to try to heal things but it seems like both sides. really how much you want and start getting understand one another paragraph and that if you have one and believe you're right where you're right i'm sorry to cut you off but we're running out of time but amber i appreciate your call i think that you are spot on and that is you know part of the essence of white privilege and something the most white people don't get is that you know there are experience of growing up and not not always looking over their shoulder is not the experience of everybody else in this country so that's it for your take my take live thank you for all of your calls if we didn't get to your call tonight dr speck next week. coming up chances are if there is a conspiracy theory out there republicans are going to fall hook line and sinker for the what are the consequences for america when one of its political parties has gone totally insane.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hardy welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry. guys here's what you said. you know what my dear you. want to listen to featuring a liberal approach. that is really. going to hurt you to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that throws us in facials that garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that.

in historical news out of the pacific northwest just after midnight last night hundreds of people gathered underneath seattle's space needle or is it the spaced out needle now and in unison as the clock struck midnight fired up joints to commemorate their state's new marijuana legalization law going into effect in a blow to nixon's failed drug war washington became the first state the nation to officially legalize recreational marijuana colorado set to follow suit on january fifth ironically washington's new law took effect just one day after the anniversary of prohibition of alcohol being repealed in america in one hundred thirty three over the coming weeks and months of washington state will craft a highly regulated market for the new legalized drug and license growers and distributors and a twenty five percent tax that will bring in much needed revenue for the state the police response to this new law was welcoming the seattle police department

spokesman issued a statement reading the police department believes that under state law you may responsibly get baked order some pizzas and enjoy a lord of the rings marathon in the privacy of your own home if you want to. now comes the hard work what are the legal levels of t.h.c. to drive or not to drive how do you handle tax or not taxing people who grow pot in their windows so what if the feds invade the state this is a beginning and it provokes a lot of questions but it's going to be very interesting to watch washington state and colorado figure out the answers to. it's thursday so let's get some super smart sparrows and we humans see cigarette butts scattered in city streets or an ashtray outside a building we generally think of them as

a nuisance an eyesore but when cute little sparrows see cigarette butts they think of themselves great way to stay warm and to ward off annoying pests like these little mites of lice that birds get at least those are the findings coming out of a study that was conducted at the national autonomous university in mexico a team of researchers monitored fifty seven sparrow nests in mexico city and found that the number of parasites and bugs in them decreased as the number of cigarette butts in each test increased sparrow nest used in the study had between zero and thirty eight cigarette butts in them with an average of eight butts per nest according to researchers the study of the use of cigarette butts is an example of how sparrows and other species of birds adapt to living in urban environments nicotine the main chemical found cigarettes is a natural anti parasitic byproduct of the backup plant has been used for years and as a pastor pollock for crops and to help control parasites and poultry the fact that

sparrows use cigarette butts to ward off pests and provide extra heating question into their nests is pretty cool by itself but there's also another. and larger picture here animals are incredibly intelligent and far more intelligent the way often give them credit for take for example elephants would not only mourn the loss of their own they do funerals or dolphins that plug their nose as well scavenging on the sea floor if these examples are enough this is an amazing story about a group of laboratory test animals dinner with dinner with a friend recently he told me about his time back in college as a lab assistant one of his jobs was to inject tuberculosis into the paws of amsterdam so one night he went into the lab to inject a hamster with tb and he noticed when he walked in all the animals in the room were quite energetic you know running around in their cages and making the normal noise that animals make in an animal lab whenever they have their cat cage and pulled out a hamster and flipped on its back and was ready to inject the stuff into it and

suddenly noticed something the room that have been filled with you know hundreds of animals running around and making tons of noise just moments ago it suddenly gone dead quiet looked around the room all the animals are looking at it you put the hamster back in its cage no injection and left the laboratory never went back bottom line here is that as human beings we need to reconsider the intelligence and the sentients of the animals of living organisms the planet all around us that involves thinking about things like where the meat you eat comes from or if you're ever going to continue eating it and how do we interact with our environment and ways that honor its sentients just as much as we honor our own is little sparrows give us a lot of food for thought. republican

party's descent into complete madness reached a new depth this week or a new height or get whipped up by paranoid delusions of a one world autocratic un government senate republicans on tuesday killed an international treaty designed to help people with disabilities all across the planet the u.n. sponsored convention on the rights of persons with disabilities requires signatory nations to provide for their disabled populations and get this in the same way that the nineteen ninety americans with disabilities act provides for americans with disabilities it would have required absolutely no changes to existing new law u.s. laws since again we already passed the americans with disabilities act when twenty

years ago ratification of that treaty simply meant the united states like one hundred twenty six other nations that have already signed in approved the treaty is on board with setting standards for the rest of the world to follow when it comes to meeting the needs of the disabled americans used to pride ourselves in setting moral examples for the rest of the world which is why former president george w. bush first signed this tree in two thousand and six and then was resigned by president obama in two thousand and nine but that didn't make it the official it needed to be ratified by the united states senate treaties require two thirds majority to be real ratified and yesterday it fell five job votes short of passing thirty eight republican senators cast a no vote. why because they want to continue to pander to a paranoid minority of the republican party base that believes the un is secretly assembling a global government to destroy american sovereignty throw mothers in the hague and

condemn their disabled children to death for example days before the vote rick santorum penned an op ed for the conservative birth their web site world net daily titled has treated sovereignty and she attacked a specific provision in the treaty section seven that reads in all actions concerning children with disabilities the best interest of the child shall be a primary consideration sounds reasonable that rather innocuous statement had a far more nefarious meaning to the ever paranoid rick santorum who wrote in the case of our four year old daughter bella who has trusted me for eighteen a condition that the medical literature says is incompatible with life with her best interest to be that should be allowed to die so that it leaves say so yeah just like sarah palin's death panel hysteria during the obamacare debate santorum was pushing for a no vote on the treaty either because he genuinely believed that the un's one

world government was going to demand the sacrifice of his four year old daughter or and this is what i think is true he cynically wanted to scare the hell out of his base to help us fundraise and sure enough right after this he sent out a fundraiser fundraising e-mail to the i don't know how many people he's got it was a little a lot of people asking for money again not a single u.s. law would have changed if this treaty was ratified by the senate in fact it had the potential to be very beneficial to disabled americans traveling abroad by providing the same accommodations in other countries that they have here but alternately santorum and his fear clouded rash it rationality. motivated by this paranoia at the all powerful united nations which frankly really has very little power that they would use their international police force is not to go after tyrants and despots guilty of war crimes but instead to go after santorum is four year old daughter or her home school teacher because they haven't installed

a ramp on their front door because of that paranoia republicans killed this treaty this is an extraordinary teaching moment in the face of this insanity we americans should ask ourselves what happens when one of the two major political parties in the united states either completely loses its grip on reality or chooses to pander to a base that happens after all this is the same to range republican party is currently hyping up another un one world government conspiracy known as agenda twenty one and this isn't anything new whether it's the soviets trying to take over the world or al qaeda trying to take over the work reality has rarely played an important role in republican fear mongering. or that of their frightened base two recent polls by public policy polling which is recognised as the most accurate polling service during the two thousand and twelve election captured brilliantly this disturbing mind set of so many were registered republicans driven by rants that president

obama is a socialist trying to destroy america where i live a quarter twenty five percent of registered republicans want their respective states to secede to withdraw from the union to longer be part of the united states of america now here in the real world president obama has been very good to corporate america overseeing the largest increase in corporate profits since one thousand nine hundred in fact corporate profits today are as a percentage of g.d.p. are higher than they've been in our nation's history so either president obama is the worst socialist ever. or is read a lot more milton friedman from karl marx i mean this is nuts this irrationality even extends on the part of the republicans in expensive things that don't even exist get this another p.p.p. poll found that forty nine percent almost half of registered republicans this was

last week believe that the now defunct community organization community organizing groups even acorn stole the election for president obama last month this year even though acorn has existed for two years that's nearly half the republican party believing that a group that doesn't even exist and as for years actually does exist and was able to pull off a nationwide election theft between fears of the un claims that president obama is a socialist ravings of acorn the birth ers the ten third's the death ers the republican party is begging for psychiatric help and it would be a bit amusing to see what would happen you know what they would come up with next if only republicans didn't wield norma's power in our government and if they hadn't turned the us house of representatives the institution of government that's closest to the we the people into a full fledged mental asylum and with numerous pitfalls on the horizon like the

so-called fiscal cliff the debt limit the budget battles the ongoing wars and so on americans should be very concerned about exactly how balanced solutions can be found after so many members of the republican party have flown over the cuckoo's nest back in the one nine hundred sixty s. the firesign theater created a candidate who ran for president on the campaign slogan not insane it was funny that it's not funny anymore. so a heartfelt plea to the few intelligent and thoughtful republicans left who might be watching the show it's up to you to inject sanity back into your party please do it quickly. and that's the way it is tonight thursday december sixth two thousand and twelve more information check out our website thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org or t. dot com dot com slash the big picture and don't forget to mark receive begins when you get out there get active tag your it see the.

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